Religion is big business and the Catholic Church the biggest of all. CEO Pope Francis is the head of what’s probably the wealthiest institution in the entire world. The Catholic Church’s global spending matches the annual revenues of the planet’s largest firms, and its assets—huge amounts of real estate, an actual country, theVatican City, some of the world’s greatest art— exceed those of any corporation. 716,290 square kilometres of Church-owned land across the globe. Properties include Vatican embassies, churches, cathedrals, monasteries, schools and convents.
It has holdings in such industries as banking, insurance, chemicals, steel, construction and real estate. One metric tonne of gold owned by the Holy See in 2008. Peter’s Pence produced a revenue of $86 CAN in 2011.
In many countries the church in general are exempted from the financial reporting and disclosure requirements that otherwise apply to profit or non-profit groups.
In cash flow terms, the United States is by far the most important branch for the Catholic church. America is a rich country with a large population of Catholics. The Catholic Church in the United States has created a parallel state: a vast web of schools, hospitals, universities, and charities that serve millions of clients. A 2012 investigation by the Economist estimatesd of $170 billion in annual spending in the US alone, of which almost $150 billion is associated with church-affiliated hospitals and institutions of higher education. The operating budget for ordinary parishes, at around $11 billion a year, is a relatively small share, and Catholic Charities is a smaller share still. Apple and General Motors, by way of comparison, each had revenue of about $150 billion worldwide in 2012.
Each diocese is a separate legal entity, incorporated in the states where it operates. Generally speaking, they are organized as a legal corporation wholly controlled by the individual bishop rather than a board of directors and not officially part of any larger transnational spiritual organization. This has led to conflicts during the sex abuse scandals. Lawsuits have caused disputes about how deep the church’s pockets go and who should pay. In some abuse-related litigation a number of dioceses declared bankruptcy. Individual parishes, though operating under the umbrella of the relevant bishop, have a fair degree of financial autonomy. They conduct separate fundraising and maintain separate expenses. That way, parish donors can feel they’re bolstering their particular community and not an impersonal bureaucracy. But it’s common for parish investment funds within a single diocese to be pooled. When a diocese declares bankruptcy, this raises the question of whether pooled parish investment funds are available to be seized by the bishop’s creditors or whether they exist separately. At the same time, as a matter of Canon Law individual parishes can be wholly “suppressed”, merged into other parishes or otherwise divided up at the discretion of the bishop—notwithstanding the existence of separate bank accounts. This authority suggests that the diocese does indeed wholly own and control its parishes, but church officials take advantage of the ambiguity, sometimes claiming to fully control its parishes but sometimes for legal reasons arguing that the parishes are wholly independent entities.
Last year in Ireland, the non-catholic Savita Halappanavar died, and she shouldn’t have. Savita was four months pregnant, who went to the hospital with a miscarriage in progress that developed into a blood infection. She could easily have been saved by an abortion of the already-doomed fetus. Instead, her doctors did nothing, explaining that “this is a Catholic country,” and left her to suffer in misery for days, only intervening once it was too late. Savita’s death is just the latest in a long line of tragedies directly attributable to the doctrines and beliefs of the Roman Catholic church. It is a church which is an oligarchy run by a small circle of conservative old men who make all the decisions and choose their own successors.
Their "saints" such as the canonised Mother Theresa according to outside observers who visited her “Home for the Dying” reported that medical care was sub-standard and dangerous, limited to aspirin and unsterilized needles rinsed in tap water, administered by untrained volunteers. She offered a squalid place for people to die. The millions of dollars collected by Mother Teresa and her order, enough to build many advanced clinics and hospitals, remain unaccounted for. Mother Teresa successfully persuaded the church to return a suspected pedophile priest to duty because he was a friend of hers. Eight additional complaints of child abuse were later lodged against him.
Whatever individual Catholics may do, the resources of the church as an institution are bent towards opposing social progress and positive change all over the world. Every penny put into the church collection plate, every mass attended, every hour of time and effort put into voluntary work for church organizations, shows support for the church and its reactionary mission.
Taken from here
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